Educational Consultancy
College Application & Essay Guidance
I’m here to coach you or your student through the challenges of applying to college or graduate school. Whether it’s penning a personal statement, buttoning up supplemental essays, or helping you manage the overall process, I can get you there.
Here’s a partial list of some of the schools my clients have attended:
Boston College
Boston University
Brown University
Carnegie Mellon University
Columbia University
Cornell University
Duke University
Georgetown University
Haverford College
Harvard University
New York University
North Carolina State University
Sarah Lawrence College
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
University of Michigan
University of Pennsylvania
Yale University
As a writer, editor, and teacher, I’m uniquely positioned to help you or your student craft a personal statement while ensuring that the rest of the application is as polished and persuasive as possible.
About Me
As a tutor and coach, I’ve helped hundreds of students navigate the college admission process. My role as an educational consultant grew out of my work as an author and teacher at The Princeton Review (TPR), where I wrote SAT, GRE, GMAT, and AP course materials and manuals. After a decade or so at TPR, I set out on my own, working as a private tutor with high-school and graduate students across New York City. My current efforts center on helping students with their undergraduate and graduate applications, with a particular focus on personal and supplementary essays.
In addition to my work with students, I am an award-winning playwright, librettist/lyricist, poet, and novelist. My most recent work, WHAT WE LEAVE BEHIND, written with composer Jenny Giering, is a one-woman musical originally developed at the Sundance Institute and set to premiere in fall of 2025 at Theatre Raleigh in North Carolina.
Don’t take my word for it.
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Sean coached me through SATs, AP prep, and college applications. What I appreciated the most was both the sense of calm that Sean brought to that stressful time, and also his ability to make even dull standardized test questions intellectually interesting — an opportunity for learning more than just how to fill in the right bubble. I am one of the lucky ones who had Sean’s guidance through this process and to this day feel very grateful. Couldn’t recommend him enough!
Zoë Egelman
Yale University, Harvard Law School -
Sean is the gold standard in private tutoring and essay work. He truly understands how to get the best out of his students in a way that always makes the process enjoyable. A master of his craft, Sean teaches specialized tools and strategies that have helped me achieve my academic goals. Sean is not only brilliant and articulate, but also kind and caring. I highly recommend working with him!
Andrew Weinstein, MD, FACS
Cornell University, NYU School of Medicine, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health -
Sean taught me how to master the GMAT and worked with me to ensure that my business school applications were the best they could possibly be. He was wildly helpful in every direction—I couldn’t have gotten there without him! I highly recommend him as a tutor and coach, especially when it comes to perfecting your essays.
Jon Keidan, MBA
Columbia Business School, Founder & Managing Partner, Torch Capital
If you’re interested in learning more, schedule a free consultation!
The College Essay
Let’s face it: Writing is hard.
Writing well is particularly hard. Writing well about yourself is arguably the hardest thing around. Add to this the weight of being judged on the basis of what you’ve written, and you’ve got the recipe for one of the most painful rites around: The College Essay.
The perfect essay…
...doesn’t exist.
There are bad essays, of course. Good essays? Plenty. What I help students craft are unique essays.
A unique essay is one that only this particular person could write: a bit of writing that confers a sense of its author in a way that nothing else can. As a guide and coach, this is my ultimate goal: To help students find the unique essay within them.
The unique essay
Naturally, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to a process that aims to produce something unique to each student. Some students already possess a clear sense for who they are and how to shape that understanding to an essay prompt, while others need more guidance on how best to express their ideas.
Regardless of where they fall on that spectrum, all students have something deeply meaningful to say about their identity; all students are the sole judges of their lived experience; and all students can find a way to articulate their experience.
In other words, anyone can write a great essay.
It’s all about the relationship
My approach to working with students has always been relationship-based. I consider it essential to establish a warm and open rapport. When students feel comfortable, they’re far more likely to be open to exploring the stories, experiences, and anecdotes they consider essential to their sense of self, and to do so free from fear or judgment. Believe it or not, this is the hardest part—finding out what it is a student has to say that’s unique to them.
The rest is just words.
Just the words
As a writer, I’ve spent my entire adult life spinning out words. As an editor, teacher, and coach, I’ve learned how to guide others through that process. My goal is not to tell my students what to say, but rather to guide them toward the discovery of what they have to say that is unique to them, then help them express it a way that feels deeply authentic.
Our work involves brainstorming, outlining, and refining essays through successive drafts. At the end of this process, I help students copyedit and trim their essays to the required word limits, but the real work lies in convincing students that they are the best authorities on their own lives.
The rest is just words.